


Way Down

by SideOrderOfGay



Series: Supercorptober 2020 [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Let Lena Have A Support System, Supercorptober 2020, Supercorptober Day 1 - Fall, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26751055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SideOrderOfGay/pseuds/SideOrderOfGay
Summary: "Lena watches her fall, fall, fall, and be swallowed up by the crowd that assembled on the plaza just a fraction of a second before the sound of impact reaches her ears. She elbows her way through the clamoring people, all the way to the crater she’s left in the asphalt below, and she holds her, cradles her, speaks to her in a hushed tone even after she’s stopped responding."ORKara falls and Lena unravels. And yet, through it all, she's not alone.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Series: Supercorptober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948081
Comments: 19
Kudos: 208





	Way Down

Lena watches her fall, fall, fall, and be swallowed up by the crowd that assembled on the plaza just a fraction of a second before the sound of impact reaches her ears. She elbows her way through the clamoring people, all the way to the crater she’s left in the asphalt below, and she holds her, cradles her, speaks to her in a hushed tone even after she’s stopped responding. And she stays at her side while she is lying under the yellow sun lamps, looking so small and vulnerable as if she was just resting, and she didn’t move from her side until an indeterminable amount of days later Alex’ insistent hand on her shoulder forced her outside, so they could move Kara.

Kara’s body.

Her legs carry her home, somehow. The second she enters her apartment she feels like she’s broken into a stranger’s place. She stands there, in the middle of the room, for God knows how long, staring at the gigantic comfortable sofa Kara insisted she replace her old, minimalist model with, the calendar next to the door where Kara’s encircled their date nights with red marker hearts, and all the sweet post-it notes Kara likes to leave scattered around the house whenever her Supergirl duties call her away in the early hours of morning, when not even Lena is awake yet.

Liked. Called.

And suddenly, it’s like Lena’s miles and miles underwater, the pressure in this room squeezing around her and suffocating her like an icy-wet, lead-lined blanket. She can’t breathe. She turns around on her heel and flees into the grey dusk. She doesn’t know where she’s going, spends the night in a hotel, doesn’t sleep a wink. Whenever she closes her eyes she sees Kara falling, falling, falling.

Alex doesn’t ask any questions when Lena turns up at her apartment at nine in the morning. Lena doesn’t mention the empty bottles of wine. They sit in silence for a while.

The thought of hugging Alex crosses Lena’s mind, it just seems like something she ought to do in a situation like this, to provide some thought of physical comfort. But the thought alone makes Lena nauseous, the thought of holding Alex like she held Kara’s broken body. She’s never been the hugging type anyway.

Not until she met Kara.

They have a memorial ceremony for Supergirl. It’s a grandiose thing, with millions of watchers worldwide, Cat Grant giving a moving eulogy, the unveiling of an opulent statue and a more subdued plaque on the plaza where Lena had seen her falling, falling, falling. Lena isn’t there.

Kara Danvers has a burial. Alex makes it one paragraph into her speech before her voice fails and her mother gently ushers her away with one arm around her shoulder. Lena is standing on the outskirts, feeling like an intruder as she watches Nia cry into Brainy’s shoulder, watches Kelly take Alex’ hand and hold it like an anchor chain. Just like that, the pressure is back again, the horrible crushing feeling that presses against her from the inside and the outside until she thinks she might well and truly burst if she stays here just a second longer, so she turns and –

“Nonsense, dear. You’re family too.”

It’s Eliza, regarding her with kind eyes and a not-quite-smile, and for the first time in ages Lena feels her eyes well up with tears. She doesn’t even try to hold them back. She just lets herself cry, and cry, and cry, until there’s nothing left inside, until she’s completely hollowed out. She’s too exhausted to stay awake anymore. Her sleep is dreamless.

Now that she’s started crying, she can’t seem to get herself to stop. It’s like a great dam inside her has come loose, and now she’s ready to break down sobbing at the smallest occasion. “If you need anything, anything at all, just call”, Eliza said. Still, it takes Lena half a dozen tries to work up the courage to call Kara’s friends to help her move back into her apartment. She can’t face it alone.

She doesn’t have to. Alex and Kelly are there, of course, but so are Nia and Brainy and even James, who came back for the funeral and planned to stay for a few days to support his sister. The awkwardness she feared might still exist between them is absent as they silently work together to remove all the lovely hidden notes Kara wrote, and gather up her clothes to donate like she wanted. If any of them saw Lena keeping Kara’s comfy university sweater for themselves, they don’t acknowledge it.

She forces herself to eat, tries to, at least, but in the fridge she finds the leftover takeout she’d promised Kara on _that_ day, along with a lazy onesie-clad evening on the couch watching rom-coms. She cries into Kara’s sweater until she passes out. When she wakes up it doesn’t smell like Kara anymore.

Where previously Kara’s presence that had seeped into every pore of the apartment seemed unbearable, Lena now realizes that the opposite is just as agonizing. She wonders how she survived it before, all that loneliness in her spotless apartment devoid of any personality, furnished exactly the way she purchased it. She wonders how she will survive it now.

There are hundreds of people visiting the statue of Supergirl each day, signing their names on the plaque even though it is heavily discouraged, a thousand teary eulogies launched on every social media site in existence. Nobody gives Kara’s grave a second glance. Lena can feel herself being sheltered under this cloak of irrelevance as well, nobody spares her a passing glance as she kneels down next to the featureless marble that marks her resting place. It’s not even close to what a person as phenomenal as Kara Danvers deserves, but then again, anything more grandiose would not have been in line with what she stood for. Lena doesn’t know what to say, she doesn’t know if this is even the right place to be, or if she should instead turn to Rao, billions of light years away. Regardless, this is where she feels close to Kara, close to the gigantic, gaping hole in her chest that seems like it will never stop hurting.

It’s a sunny late summer afternoon, the kind they would have spent visiting the dog park and consuming sacrilegious amounts of ice cream, a not insubstantial amount of which would end up smeared somewhere on Kara’s face. It was an open secret that Kara was doing this intentionally, because Lena would kiss it away every time without fail. Lena can almost feel it, the sun blazing down on them as Kara snort-laughs, a dot of whipped cream dancing on her nose. Just like that, she’s crying again. It’s just about all she can do these days. There’s movement at the edge of her vision, the first, orange colored autumn leaf of many drifting into view. She watches it fall, fall, fall, before gently landing on the yellowed grass below.

They organise another game night. The words _it’s what Kara would have wanted_ hang heavy in the air. It’s not fun in any sense of the word, the few times anyone can actually manage a genuine laugh is quickly stifled and drowned in heavy silence, as if the act itself is heresy. They all hug her goodbye, even though Kara isn’t there to pressure them into it, and Lena finds that she’s actually looking forward to their next game night, if just to spend more time in the company of her friends. 

When she returns to Kara’s grave (she hates the word, hates the finality of it), it’s almost completely covered in rust-red dead leaves. The tree looming above is almost bare, a stark contrast to  the deep greens of the lush foliage around it. The sight fills Lena with a feeling she doesn’t dare put a finger on.

Still, she visits again, and again, and again.  She finds herself obsessively tracking the growth of the circle of dead grass that has begun to grow around Kara’s grave. By the time it reaches the willows surrounding the cemetary and they begin losing their leaves in turn, she can’t deny herself anymore.

“Something’s happening with Kara”, she says in lieu of a greeting, storming into Alex’ apartment unannounced. _Please don’t think me insane. Please don’t think me as obsessed and deranged as Lex. Please, for once, listen to me._ She averts her eyes, she can’t bear to see the pity in them. 

There is a short period of tense silence, then: “So what do we do?”

When Kara opens her eyes three days, five hours and thirty-six minutes later, they're both at her side.


End file.
